Spinal surgeons often treat spinal disorders with spinal fusion augmented with elongate spinal rods connected to the spine with pedicle screws or other spinal screws. Such “rod assemblies” generally comprise one or two spinal rods and a plurality of screws inserted through the pedicles and into their respective vertebral bodies. The screws are provided with connectors for coupling the spinal rods to the screws. The spinal rods extend along the longitudinal axis of the spine, coupling to the plurality of screws via their connectors.
In some cases after installing all of the pedicle screws through the pedicles the connectors do not line up properly to satisfactorily install a rod within such connectors. In these cases a surgeon will attempt to align the connectors by trying to adjust the position of the vertebrae; however, this is not always possible without danger to the patient's spine. A surgeon will often times attempt to bend the rod to make it fit within all of the connectors of the pedicle screws to properly install the rod within the connectors, however, again this can sometimes be very difficult to accomplish.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a spacer or pedicle screw head extender device which could be added to either a fixed head or multi-axial head pedicle screw to make it easier to properly align the rod within the plurality of screws extending along the longitudinal axis of the spine. The extenders could also be used with other spinal screws not necessarily being threaded through the pedicle to assist in connecting the screw to a rod assembly.